Ned Kelly and the City of Bees

by Thomas Keneally

  Apis seemed to shrug, if a bee can shrug.

  “I don’t see the point of this kind of talk at all,” said Selma, moving away.

  Apis grunted a little and, turning, saw us. Our eyes must have been full of questions.

  “Can you keep a secret?” she asked us.

  We nodded over and over. Children have always been like that—they itch all over when a secret is mentioned, and they don’t stop itching until they know what the secret is.

  “I thought,” Apis murmured, “that Selma might want to move away and start a new hive, because the new Queen is about to be born.”

  “Why is that a secret?” I asked the bee.

  “Because Selma would be jealous if she knew.”

  “But Selma laid the egg in the first place.”

  “That wouldn’t stop her being jealous.”

  We followed Apis down the honeycomb—we were now so used to climbing—and reached the part of the hive where the Queen Bee cells hung. They were bigger than ordinary cells, and there were many of them. Around them, a crowd of workers had got together and were watching, not buzzing, not moving a feeler or a wing.

  “How do they know she’s going to be born today?” I whispered.

  “They can tell, that’s all,” Apis hissed back. “This is the seventeenth day you know. The seventeenth day since the first egg was laid.”

  Somewhere, in another part of the hive, Selma wandered glumly in the midst of a crowd of bees listening to Romeo’s supply of jokes. Because he hadn’t been out to Mrs Maguire’s to hear the Funny Hour, he must have been running short of riddles.

  Here though, where Nancy Clancy and Apis and I were, no one was bored, no one needed to speak.

  At last the bottom of the cell began to split open, and we could see the new Queen’s head. She bit away more and more of the cell until at last she was able to drag her whole body through and stand hanging from the outside of the cell. She was a beautiful new Queen. As she stood on the honeycomb, she looked at us. She shone, she was dazzling, not weak and complaining like a human baby, but fully grown and strong. As soon as the workers and drones who were all around her saw her shining black eyes, they crowded against her, waving their feelers, fluttering their wings. I expected them to break out cheering, forgetting that none of them but Apis and Basil knew how to cheer. But watching them, we knew that there was a new Queen in the hive. What would happen to the old Queen?

  “What will happen to Selma?” I asked Apis.

  But before Apis could tell me, a second young Queen began to struggle out of her cell. Before she could get properly on her feet, her sister the new Queen rushed to her and pushed her sting into her many times over. The sight made me sick. In my shock, I cried, “Why did she do that?”

  “Shush!” Nancy Clancy told me.

  But Apis explained. “There can only be one Queen,” she said softly. “She has to sting all her sisters as they’re born.”

  I was still trying not to be sick. That was it—I couldn’t stay on in a hive where sisters killed each other.

  “Take me home!” I told Apis.

  “Shush!” Nancy Clancy said again.

  I climbed away from that terrible place, back up the honeycomb wall. I wanted to be on my own. But Apis followed me. “Ned,” she called. I stopped climbing. “Are you shocked? Is that it? Are you shocked because the new Queen kills her sisters?”

  “Yes,” I said in a small voice.

  “She has to do it. There can only be one Queen in a hive.”

  “But it’s awful,” I said.

  “Wasn’t there a human Queen once, called Elizabeth? And didn’t she kill her cousin Mary who also wanted to be Queen? Didn’t she cut Mary’s head off?”

  “That was in the old days. That was different. And it was wrong. It was wrong even then.”

  “Was it, Ned? The world is full of sad things that can’t be changed.”

  “Then will she sting Selma?” I didn’t want anything to happen to Selma, I’d got used to her squawky laugh and her crazy royal ways.

  Before Apis could answer me, I heard a flurry of noise below us. Looking down, I saw that Selma had arrived on the scene. Someone must have told her what was happening, that a new Queen had been born. I saw her look at her cruel young daughter. Both Queens stood very still and straight. They walked towards each other and lightly touched with their feelers and then stood and stared at each other. They did not make a sound or try to sting, and all the bees in the hive seemed to be watching as they silently faced one another. Then Selma turned and walked away. Everyone began buzzing now.

  Apis said, “You like Selma. Well, Selma hatched once, years ago, and had to kill all her sisters. Because that’s how Queens have always been.”

  “What will happen now?”

  “Selma will leave. And some of us will leave with her. Remember what I told you in the past. I said, in seventeen days a new Queen will be born. And then everything will be turned upside down.”

  I had to admit that. Things had been turned upside down.

  13

  Moving and Maurie Abey

  That evening we sat in our favorite place near the mouth of the cave, looking at the sun falling bright red behind the mountains. There were Apis, Romeo, Basil and, of course, Miss Nancy Clancy and I.

  “Well, I’m going with Selma,” Basil said. “The boys and I don’t trust her much, but that new Queen really looks like a tough one.”

  “And of course I’m going with Selma too,” Romeo said. “Most drones won’t. All most of them can say is how beautiful the new Queen is. They’ll stay here and fly in her wedding flight …”

  “And when the autumn rains come,” said Basil, “she’ll boot them out, that one. You can bet on that. Oh yes.”

  I didn’t know what they were talking about … drones … wedding flights. Apis saw me frowning and laughed. “I think our young friend Ned doesn’t quite know what’s happening. As I told you, when a new Queen is born, the old Queen moves out and looks for a new place to build her hive. She takes with her, as I said, any of the workers who want to go and even some of the drones—”

  “Even of the drones?” asked Basil with some anger.

  “—even of the drones who want to go with her. Most of the drones will stay on though, because in a little while the new Queen will fly out on her wedding flight and the drones will follow. She will fly high until there’s only one drone left near her.”

  “And that one drone will be allowed to join with her,” Basil explained, “and put his seed in her body so that she will be able to lay eggs from which bees will be born. There’ll only be one lucky drone, all the rest will just fly in circles. But I have to admit it, most of the lads are so thick that each one of them thinks he’ll be the one who’ll mate with the Queen. Idiots!”

  “Are you coming with us, Ned?” Apis asked me. “Or do you prefer the new Queen too?”

  I couldn’t imagine a bee hive without Apis and Nancy Clancy. “If you’re going, I want to go.”

  “Oh I’m going with Selma all right,” said Apis. “This new one looks too vain to want to learn radio. This young one will work us into the ground.” She sighed. “Besides, I like old Selma.”

  “And as for old Miss Nancy Clancy,” said Miss Nancy Clancy, “I’ll follow Apis, that’s my fancy.”

  All at once I felt very happy. We were leaving the hive where the wasps had fought, where the savage young Queen had murdered her sisters. We would go to a new bright place that had no terrible memories.

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “I’m going too.” But no one seemed to be sure just when the move would happen.

  “Nancy Clancy,” said Apis, “should have her books and cups and candles ready to go at a moment’s notice.” Apis would make sure there were two strong young workers detailed to carry Miss Clancy’s furniture—her table, chair and bed—on their backs.

  “One thing is certain,” Basil told us. “If Selma doesn’t go soon, the new Queen will turn on her and drive h
er out at the point of a sting.”

  Overnight, Apis and the other workers who had decided to travel with Queen Selma got ready for the journey. They were allowed to go to the cells where honey was stored and suck it up into their bodies. They fetched Selma and took her for a training run over the surface of the honeycomb, trying to get some of her fat off so that she could fly better and further.

  “Why, why?” asked Selma, puffing along. “Why run me around like this?”

  “You don’t have to be told,” Apis answered.

  Romeo ran behind the others, hardly keeping up, no breath left for telling riddles.

  “Can’t I,” asked Selma, “since I’m a royal being, have some of that delicious jelly?” Apis refused in her toughest, huskiest voice, and all the other workers buzzed in a way that meant no!

  “Oh-h-h!” said Selma. “Moving is hell.”

  Miss Nancy Clancy and I were woken before the sun had risen. Apis and two strong young workers had come to collect Miss Clancy’s furniture. We tied the bed to the back of one of the workers, using a length of Nancy Clancy’s old, old rope. We slipped her cups, The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast and her other books beneath the mattress. On the back of the second worker we loaded the table, chair and bucket.

  As the bees left with her furniture, Miss Nancy Clancy looked around her empty cell. I once saw a lady called Mrs Rudge, a farmer’s wife, look around her kitchen like that the morning the Rudges sold their farm and moved away.

  “Come on,” I said, taking her by the elbow and urging her out of the door.

  In the doorway of the hive hundreds of bees were gathered, most of them full of honey. Selma stood, much thinner than I’d ever seen her, amongst a little knot of servants and fanners. She looked miserable and Romeo was trying to make her laugh.

  “If a carrot and a cabbage,” Romeo was squeaking, “if a carrot and a cabbage ran a race, which would win?”

  “Who knows?” asked Selma mournfully. “Who cares?”

  “The cabbage wins. Because it’s a head.”

  “I see,” said Selma, not laughing.

  “Well,” Romeo gasped, “why is it wrong to whisper?”

  “I suppose you’ll insist on telling me the answer,” Selma groaned.

  “Because it is not aloud.”

  Selma went on groaning. The sun rose, but there was thunder in the hills. Apis told us. “It always thunders when a Queen leaves her hive. An old bee told me. It always thunders.”

  “Why are we waiting,” asked Nancy Clancy, “here, all still,

  When we should be flying over the hill

  Searching for a hole in a hollow old tree,

  A palace for Selma and a cell for me …?”

  Saying this rhyme, Nancy Clancy sounded worried, as if she was not just making verse to annoy her friends.

  “Soon, soon,” Apis told her. “Soon the scout bees will be back.”

  I knew that we wouldn’t move straight to a new hive. First we would all swarm. The scout bees would find a branch or some other place where all the bees could cluster together and wait. While all Selma’s bees hung there in a great bunch, the scouts—who were the older, wiser and stronger bees—would search for a place to build a hive. The search might take a few hours, or a few days, and meantime Nancy Clancy and I, as well as Apis, Basil and Romeo, would have to hang in a bunch of bees from some tree branch.

  It was only a little while before the scout bees landed in the doorway. They began dancing, raising their tails and pointing to the place they had found for us to swarm on. “On my back!” Apis ordered suddenly. We had only just obeyed her when all the bees around us took off, Apis with them. We shot out of the mouth of the hive like water from a hose, all flying together, all going in the same direction. I hung on to Apis with one hand and raised my other arm the way a cowboy riding a wild horse does. “Weeh-hee!” I yelled, and Miss Nancy Clancy laughed, and everyone seemed much happier now that they no longer had to shuffle round the doorway of the old hive thinking, “We’ll never see this place again.”

  We flew for a mile down river, all very close together. I could have reached out with my hands or feet and touched the flapping wings of the bees on either side of Apis or the ones below her. I could see, in the openings between the brown bodies of the crowd of bees, Mrs Abey’s place on the side of the hill. But I did not notice that Maurie, sent home from school again for being Maurie, was watching from the Abeys’ back fence. I did not know that seeing us swarm by he ran and got a milk bucket and its lid and began to follow us.

  At last the leaders landed on a branch of a spotted gum near the cow paddocks of a farmer called Mr Morrison. They clung to the branch with their spiky feet, and the ones who landed next clung to the backs of the ones who had landed first, and so it went on, till by the time Apis, Miss Clancy and I arrived at the swarming place, a great ball of bees was hanging from the branch. Somewhere in the middle of it was Selma and her joker, Romeo, who was still probably muttering riddles at his Queen. We landed on the outside of the mass of bees and hung on. Nancy Clancy and I in our turn clung to Apis’s wide back. The scout bees were already flying away, looking at last for a proper place for a hive.

  “What if they don’t find a place?” I asked Apis.

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” Apis snapped at me. “They always do.”

  “I’ve heard from bees in the past,” said Nancy Clancy, “that if it rains hard, or if no one can agree on where we should live, then we just stay here until we drop off, one by one.”

  “I won’t tolerate that talk!” Apis told her.

  “What do we do now then?” asked Miss Clancy.

  “I suggest we have a sleep.”

  And before long we were all dozing in the early morning sun.

  But Miss Nancy Clancy had not mentioned another of the fates that often overtakes swarms of wild bees. Bee farmers capture them, lock them into a hive or a bucket and take them home with them. And that was what Maurie Abey knew. He had run behind us so that he could catch Selma and all her bees with his bucket, and then he would sell us all to some farmer, perhaps to Mr Morrison himself. Even while we dozed on Apis’s back, on the outside of the swarm, Maurie was searching amongst the trees to find where we had landed. At last he saw us and came tramping through the tree and over the muddy grass towards us. We were above his head, so he found a solid stick, held it in one hand and, with the other, put the bucket right under the place where we were hanging. He intended to use the stick to knock us off the branch and into the bucket. Then before anyone could bite him, he would put the lid on the bucket and set out to sell us.

  The first I knew of it was when Apis began jigging up and down. She was dancing a warning to the others. I woke up, looked below me and saw the giant grinning face of horrible Maurie, his giant gleaming eyes, his dirty hair, a giant smear of jam on his chin from his messy lunch. As I watched, he raised his stick and tried to sweep the whole bunch of us into his pail.

  But it didn’t all happen the way he wanted it to. The bees did not land in his bucket. Instead, disturbed on their branch by the dancing of Apis, they saw Maurie and decided he was a more comfortable place to swarm. In two seconds Maurie was covered from the top of his greasy hair to the laces of his shoes with Selma’s bees. Even Apis, carrying Nancy Clancy and me, landed on his head.

  I knew exactly what Maurie Abey himself knew—that if he moved much, he would be stung hundreds of times. Even if I didn’t like him, I didn’t want him to be filled with all that bee poison. I noticed that he was now doing the first wise thing he had ever done in his life. He was keeping very still but I could hear him whimpering through his open mouth.

  “Oh no,” he was sobbing. “Oh no!”

  “Come on,” I said to Miss Nancy Clancy. I had climbed off Apis’s back.

  “Where are you going?” asked Apis.

  “I’m going to talk to him.”

  “That brute?” said Miss Nancy Clancy.

  “Yes. You come too.” />
  “Why should I?” she asked. But she began to climb down with me, making for Maurie’s bee-encrusted ear. We climbed over the backs of hundreds of bees, but they didn’t seem to mind. At last we were facing the shadowy hole through which Maurie heard things.

  “Maurie!” I yelled. “Don’t move. They’ll go away in the end. So please, keep still.”

  “If you want a big surprise,” yelled Nancy Clancy, not nearly so helpfully, “Yell and wriggle and blink your eyes.”

  Maurie began to twitch. At any second he might start running. But the bees would stay with him and, angered, put their stings in.

  “Maurie,” I called again, “listen Maurie, please don’t move.”

  Once again Nancy Clancy was no help. “If you’d like to be one big sting,” she shouted, “Blow your nose like anything.”

  “Nancy!” I barked. Maurie twitched again. “No, no, keep still please, Maurie. Do you know who I am? I’m Ned Kelly, the boy you tried to run over with a bike, that’s who I am. But if you keep still and don’t move, you’ll live to go home to your mother, and by tomorrow you’ll be running someone else over.”

  “Oh, oh,” he kept saying, as if he would never run anyone else over ever.

  “Miss Clancy,” I said, “don’t say anything to upset him.”

  I climbed back up Maurie’s head, or rather I climbed back up the backs of the bees who coated Maurie all over. Apis was waiting for me. “If you did a dance,” I asked her, “could you get all these bees to leave Maurie?”

  But Apis could not hear me, because so many bees were buzzing and Maurie was loudly moaning.

  “Can you get the others to leave Maurie and go back to the tree?” I yelled.

  “I could do a dance,” said Apis, “but why should I do a dance to save that monster from being stung?”

  I reminded her that whoever stung Maurie would not be able to get their stings out again. Was Maurie worth the trouble, I asked her.

  “All right,” said Apis. “You behave as if he were your brother or something.”

  She began to dance over the backs of her own brothers and sisters. The dance said, “Let’s leave this miserable lump and go back to the tree.” In twos and threes and then in bigger groups they began to do that, leaving the surface of Maurie’s clothes and body and swarming again on the branch.